AuthorTopic: Practicing making a tutorial (Read 2249 times)

Hey again y'all! Before I actually go and make a more dedicated series of tutorials, I felt it would be better to warm up making tutorial style videos. So I created this tutorial on a specific technique I use when 3D modeling. Let me know how I did ^_^

My main priority when making tutorials is to not waist my viewers time, so I aim to make my videos no more than 6 minutes long so that they can just cover the material of the specific point. If the viewer should need to take a moment, I am under the impression that it is up to them to pause the video, or scrub to the previous relevant point.

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Just tell me what you think! Should I lean to a more expressive reading of my lines? Or would you rather I go for a more monotone and clear reading?

I saw the tutorial covering two subject areas – (1) use of “transition strips” and (2) how to use anim8or to create a transition strip (just the way I break things down in my head). If you are teaching use of transition strips I think you should provide more examples of how these can be used in scenes and less detail on how to use anim8or – a tutorial aimed at artistic technique. If you are teaching how to use anim8or, then more detail is needed on which tools you are using, what the tools do and what the affect of each one is.

Since I am familiar with the anim8or tools, I learnt about transition strips. But I think there is one key part that is missing – You only see the grass in the scene, part of the transition strip is transparent and the whole technique relies on the transparency. I think you should include a bit more on the material.

also, was that you talking, or a computer? there were some moments when i thought the voiceover had a strange synthetic sound to it... although i guess the same effect could have come from your mic or from post-processing the sound.

@thecolclough, That's my voice, but I have a below average breathing capacity and don't own a proper mic.

@AlecJames , good call, that didn't even occur to me. I'll probably revisit this in another video to make more sense on that!

Welp 3 is enough to call it a pattern.

If I may ask what kind of pauses would you like?

I didn't think to pause, because this style of tutorial is under the impression that the viewer is not to be watching it simultaneously while trying to achieve the effect, but would pause the video themselves when needed, and feel free to re-watch any parts of the video they needed to.

I don't think you need pauses. As you say, the viewer can control the pace of the tutorial by pausing, rewinding etc. I do agree that this could be separated into two separate tutorials, the first explaining the V strip concept, how it works and why it's needed (with a few more examples of scenes with the V strip missing and in place) and a separate tutorial on the technical construction of a V strip.

For the second tutorial, I'm not sure it's necessary to elucidate every single step in detail. I think you can assume that anybody thinking of joining this project has a basic understanding of the fundamentals of Anim8or. Where I think you should concentrate is on explaining the more tricky ideas, such as flipping the object to create vertical symmetry (ie. why this is important) and the way the material works (eg. if it includes transparencies or alphas). Having said that, in a collaborative project it is important that everybody's work meets the project's minimum requirements without the need for someone to make adjustments before it can be used, so there's nothing wrong with defining things like the required scale and angle of the V under different circumstances, etc.

I think your visuals match your verbal explanations very well from an editing point of view, and after watching this tutorial I'm confident that if I had access to the texture used I would be able to submit a scene that met the required protocol with regards to the V strips, so in that sense at least I would consider this warm-up a success

Well the speech in parts is rapid and tricky to listen to, by pauses i just mean like commas and full stop pauses in a sentence but the audio equivalent.Pacing as the others say may be a better way of saying what i am trying to say.On subsequent hearings i found it easier to listen to.I'm just trying to be an objective average listener.Not everyone seems to think the occasional pause between statements is necessary so i wouldn't take too much notice of my observations.

drewi has basically covered what i was going to say about pacing - you don't need massive quiet bits all over the place, just take slightly longer to pronounce your commas and full stops. be measured rather than hurried, that's all. for a tutorial, i think people would find a 7-minute video with clear diction more helpful than a rushed 6-minute one, if you follow.

if you're planning on making a lot of videos like this then it would be worth investing in a decent microphone - you can get a USB mic for £20 to £40 on Amazon (give or take exchange rates, of course); personally i use a Samson Q1U (now a few years old but still working fine) with Audacity to record and clean up the input; it's not completely perfect but it's plenty good enough for most purposes.

hope you didn't take my initial question the wrong way, by the way - didn't mean to be rude!

as with anything, your tutorials will no doubt improve with practice, but you're off to a really good start